Matt had kind words about me. That made me happy. Also, he's genuinely one of the nicest people I've ever met.

Why does my life have to be so smallAnd death is foreverAnd does forever have a life to call its own?Don't give me an answer cause you only knowAs much as I knowUnless you've been there onceAnd I hardly think soGreen Day - One of My Lies

He made a 2nd video talking about a lot of politics BS that occurred with setting up this debate and TST. I'm wondering if you got hit with any of that?

Overall, it looked like you didn't prepare that well but considering it's Matt Dillahunty I wouldn't be surprised if you were a little starstruck. I know I would be.

"But this is irrelevant because in either case, whether a god exists or not, whether your God (with a capital G) exists or not, it doesn't matter. We both are, in either case, evolved apes. " - Nesslig20

Dustnite wrote:He made a 2nd video talking about a lot of politics BS that occurred with setting up this debate and TST. I'm wondering if you got hit with any of that?

Overall, it looked like you didn't prepare that well but considering it's Matt Dillahunty I wouldn't be surprised if you were a little starstruck. I know I would be.

Yea. I still need to watch the second video. I did watch some of it.

The political BS was basically this (and this actually ties into the second point about my preparedness):

I found out via Reddit that he was going to be in town, and was looking for someone to debate. I threw out there that I'm a Satanist and I'd be interested in a dialectic on the topic of the value of religion, but that he and I agree on most points so I'm not sure it'd be a debate so much. They (not Matt, but the people setting it up) wanted to call it a debate so I didn't really argue on that point. I can present it as a debate and still achieve the same goal of exploring the topic with him. So I wasn't there to defend a position I was deeply invested in, but to present my view and explore it from angles I hadn't considered, with the potential that I might present something he hadn't. Different than most of his opponents, I think.

I was definitely a little star-struck, but a big thing also is that I wasn't going to root myself in my position. I wanted to be prepared to defend it, but too much prep work would make me too invested in being "right" rather than being correct.

So anyway, I expressed interest in that on I think a Thursday. The following day the Tri-State Freethinkers (who organized the event) contacted me and we discussed it. I asked for a few days so I could clear it with TST higher ups - I didn't want anyone to think I was speaking on behalf of TST or presenting my personal views as an official stance. Unfortunately, over the weekend I didn't manage to get in touch with anyone (I have since been given the correct contact info, what I had was bad). But I applied some basic reason: so long as I preface my opening statement with a disclaimer that these are my views and not an official stance of TST, there wouldn't be a problem. I spoke with a couple other members to make sure I wasn't missing something, and we agreed that that should be acceptable.

I was waiting for TSF to start advertising it before I shared it with the general public and TST as a whole. The organizer had requested a bio, and I'd provided one, but all they'd described me as was "Mark, a member of the Satanic Temple" - no last name, nothing. Now I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why that happened, like maybe the information didn't get passed to the person writing the ad. I don't know. Either way, I was on vacation in North Carolina when it finally came out. I didn't learn until a few days later, on the 4th of July. It hit the TST facebook page early that morning, and I discovered that people were panicking about it towards early evening. There were lots of questions, like "who the fuck is Mark!?" and "Is this guy trying to speak on our behalf?" and "is this authorized?" and all that jazz.

So I quickly jumped into damage control mode, said "Hey, I'm Mark. No clue why they didn't include my last name, but..." and then I went on to explain what I've already explained about prefacing it as not being TST policy. As I had expected, that calmed everything down. I took some time out to focus on answering any questions people had, explained that I was just on vacation and not paying attention to facebook, and very quickly it became a non-issue. However, in the time between it getting all the attention and me explaining, our guys reached out to TSF, and TSF removed the reference to the Satanic Temple - labeling me just "a Satanist." Which is also fine by me.

So come the day of the debate and the Church of Satan has the exact same reaction. Matt showed me they were blowing up his twitter feed with the same panic, except far more generalized. I think it made sense for TST to be defensive when the first thing our guys saw of it was not me saying, "hey guys guess what." It's reasonable to be defensive of your organization's name. Removing TST from the ad was a perfectly reasonable step to avert any concern. But CoS got salty just because I'm a Satanist and not a member of their particular club - they hate us, they want to own the term, they froth and cry when we're even mentioned. So they sat and rubbed sand in their vaginas over a non-COS member being called a Satanist and tried to rail on Matt to not encourage that. Two vastly different responses with seemingly similar rhetoric.

But we were basically like "please don't use our name since we don't know who this guy is." They were like "HOW YOU IS CAN CALL SOMEONE SATANIST IF THEY DON'T THINK IT BE LIKE IT IS BUT IT DO"

haha, I think I have much disdain for CoS and didn't realize it until I got to that last paragraph. But it's only because of they way they act about shit. Reason isn't their forte.

Why does my life have to be so smallAnd death is foreverAnd does forever have a life to call its own?Don't give me an answer cause you only knowAs much as I knowUnless you've been there onceAnd I hardly think soGreen Day - One of My Lies

CoS: "He's not a Satanist"TST: "We don't know who that is, can you not use our name since we don't know if he's actually a member?"

CoS was doing the No True Scotsman. TST was only objecting to the name being used without confirmation that I'm a member.

Why does my life have to be so smallAnd death is foreverAnd does forever have a life to call its own?Don't give me an answer cause you only knowAs much as I knowUnless you've been there onceAnd I hardly think soGreen Day - One of My Lies

CoS: "He's not a Satanist"TST: "We don't know who that is, can you not use our name since we don't know if he's actually a member?"

CoS was doing the No True Scotsman. TST was only objecting to the name being used without confirmation that I'm a member.

This is the kind of crap I like to avoid and it's why I tend to stay away from anything approaching a religious organization. I do belong to a few secular humanist organizations and they give me the sense of community I may be missing without requiring any tenets, etc.

Anyways, props for going up against DIllahunty. If it had been structured as a "two guys having a beer" discussion instead of a debate I think the entire tone of the event would have shifted toward the better.

"But this is irrelevant because in either case, whether a god exists or not, whether your God (with a capital G) exists or not, it doesn't matter. We both are, in either case, evolved apes. " - Nesslig20

Dustnite wrote:This is the kind of crap I like to avoid and it's why I tend to stay away from anything approaching a religious organization.

That's a valid reaction for any organization whatsoever. Jokes about football being a religion aside, if someone presents themselves as a member of the NFL and is here to talk about football but the only thing you get is that their name is Michael, the NFL might go "whoa who the fuck is that?" and be totally justified in saying "just call him a football player, we don't know who that is."

It's a perfectly reasonable response to preemptively extricate your name from something you're not a part of when you see it used. Doesn't matter if that's the Satanic Temple, the National Football League, One World by Night, or anything else.

Why does my life have to be so smallAnd death is foreverAnd does forever have a life to call its own?Don't give me an answer cause you only knowAs much as I knowUnless you've been there onceAnd I hardly think soGreen Day - One of My Lies